


Tender is the Night

by mydogwatson



Series: The Postcard Tales [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: After the tarmac, M/M, Sherlock slips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5096735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens after Sherlock gets off the plane and goes back to 221B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tender is the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to slip a thank you in here for all the lovely comments and kudos you are giving these stories. Each one is so appreciated.

Mycroft took far too much pleasure in telling me all about how he had orchestrated the phony return of Moriarty in order to get me off that plane. He was delighted at the success of his plan. I was glad to be back in 221B, but beyond that it was difficult to care very much. My odious brother finally left. As he went, there were slyly dropped hints about future events. I ignored them.

Unless he had a plan that would somehow reverse time so that I never jumped off that rooftop, never left London for three years, never threw John Watson into the path of that nightmare in the red coat, I wasn’t interested.

When Mycroft was gone, I stirred myself off the settee long enough to lock the door and draw the curtains. Before sitting again, I made myself a cup of strong tea. [Yes, despite the stories of my ineptness, I do know how to brew a decent mug of Earl Grey.]

I sat down again in the darkening room to sip my tea, and remember the events of the past few days. There was some regret for how things had worked out. How things had fallen apart during the meeting with Magnussen. The miscalculation was not entirely my fault, of course; Mycroft had been wrong as well.

It did not matter, because those events were over-shadowed by what had happened later. Not the aborted flight to a suicide mission. I was ready for that. The part that plunged the knife into my gut [or another bullet into my chest] was the farewell on the tarmac. Was it too much for me to expect John to have shown some emotion? Some hint that he cared at all? 

Apparently it was. Even when I said plainly that we would never see one another again, he was oblivious. He might as well have been checking his watch. Obviously, I had been an idiot for thinking all that best friend talk really meant anything to John.. He seemed eager, almost, to have me gone so that he could go back and hold the hand of the woman who had killed me. I only came back from death for him. And not for the first time either. Didn’t matter, it seemed. Did he think Morstan would do the same?

I stood once more and went into what had been John’s room. My own room had been the target of many searches. No one ever thought to check the floorboards under his bed. The little metal box was just where I had left it.

Any evidence to the contrary, I am not an idiot, so even as I tightened the elastic band around my arm, I knew it was a mistake. My sobriety had been hard won and here I was throwing it away. If Lestrade found out he would ban me from cases. Molly would hit me again. Mrs. Hudson would cry. And Mycroft would try to ship me off to rehab once more.

None of that mattered at the moment I inserted the needle and released the 7% solution into my welcoming body. All that mattered was that John wanted to live with, sleep with, love, the woman who shot me more than he wanted to have me in his life. I did not understand that, but I could accept it. He, of course, would say I told him to go back. It seems impossible to me that he did not understand I had only done that to save his life. She might have killed him otherwise.

I dropped the needle, fell back against the cushion and closed my eyes, letting the familiar sweet oblivion sweep over me.

My brilliant mind, which so often seems to work against me, was kind this time. It conjured up a John who suddenly appeared on the settee next to me. This John was not cold or angry or shouting at me. He was lovely, the way he swept curls from my forehead, moving gentle hands across my face, dropping butterfly kisses onto my head.

I should have said something, told him how much it meant that he was here, because a dream John was better than nothing. This, then, was how I could get through the rest of my life. With the 7% solution and a make-believe John.

He smiled at me again and I never wanted this night to end, because it was all so tender. I felt loved and was that so wrong? Was I so unworthy?

John held me as I fell asleep.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Title from: Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald


End file.
